Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Andy Rubin: Complete Tool

Oct 8, 2010 7:52AM PDT

Listen to this nonsense:

PC Mag: People have been saying that the freedom of Android has basically meant that the carriers are free to screw the consumers.

Rubin: If I were to release an operating system that I claimed was open and that forced everybody to make [phones] all look the same and all support very narrow features and functionality, the platform wouldn?t win. It wouldn?t win because the OEMs have a lot of value to bring and the carriers have a lot of value to bring, and they need a vehicle by which to put their interesting differentiating features on these things.


What a bunch of insipid, marketing doublespeak. Translation: We talk a big game about the importance to ?the community? and ?openness? but we will gladly make ourselves the ***** of the carriers and OEM?s. I guess that?s fine. This is a business after all and they are trying to dominate. But you don?t get to pretend that you are the open source poster boys anymore when you let carriers and OEM?s screw your consumers with ?added value?.

John Gruber puts it best:

Things you don?t hear iPhone users say: ?Man, this iPhone would be even better if my carrier could ?add value? to it.?

http://mobile.pcmag.com/device2/article.php?CALL_URL=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2370464,00.asp

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Too much freedom
Oct 9, 2010 12:43PM PDT

Counter-intuitively means less freedom. As people then have the freedom to take other peoples freedom away. Richard Stallman understands this, and hence the strict licensing conditions GNU has.
Google should really do similar, to at minimum prevent crapware and all these custom skins like HTC Sense.

- Collapse -
There is an irony that in order to preserve the purity and
Oct 10, 2010 8:38AM PDT

"freedom:" of the open source ethos, open source software must force terms and conditions on people which makes it... well kind of authoritarian :-P

Mind you I don't have a problem with these kinds of licensing agreements at all. I think Stallman is very smart to implement them. There is no such thing as a system that works without rules.

- Collapse -
Crapware
Oct 15, 2010 11:09PM PDT

Yeah, that's really annoying, bu HTC Sense is actually good, unlike MotoBLUR.